Organisations with their sights set on the future of assessment have been invited to apply to a £1 million fund, supported by NCFE.
The Assessment Innovation Fund is being made available for two pilots on an initial 12-month basis, with up to £100,000 being up for grabs for organisations such as providers, qualification developers, and awarding bodies.
“The fund is now open for applications from any organisation with an interesting idea about what the future of assessment might look like for the various stages of the learner journey,” NCFE has said.
NCFE wants ‘truly transformational’ assessment system
The awarding body envisions creating “innovative, robust and reliable” assessment solutions, which are “inherently fair and will provide an appropriate level of ‘recognisable value’ to all stakeholders who have invested in learning”.
Governance for the pilots will be provided by a panel of six AIF board members, which draws from awarding bodies, education technology organisations such as Jisc, providers and NCFE representatives.
NCFE’s head of assessment innovation Janine Oliver reasoned that, “as the pace of change in the world is ever-increasing, particularly due to disruptive new technologies, major societal trends, and not to mention the ongoing global pandemic, the needs of the labour market will continue to rapidly evolve”.
Which will require people to “continuously develop themselves to overcome challenges and seize opportunities” and integral to that will be “looking at the future of assessment and identifying the key ingredients required to create a system that is truly transformational for learners in technical and vocational education.
“Through this fund, we hope to enable and empower organisations to think big – to explore, innovate and importantly evidence how we can continue to evolve the way we assess in the future, learning lessons from the seismic global changes over the last two years.”
Applications for phase one of the fund close on 1 October.
The cries of foul among some critics about last week’s results are completely out of proportion, writes Tom Bewick
It’s been another August like no other. As the hubbub from last week dies down a little, it’s worth reflecting on how it differs to the summer that went before.
Last summer, we first of all had the “exams fiasco”. Ministers all across the UK’s devolved education systems were forced into a set of last-minute, highly embarrassing U-turns.
But back in 2020, the media and Westminster-based commentariat were much more empathetic with students’ plight.
However this year, the intergenerational academic snobbery has been on full display. There have been various politicians and pundits frothing at the mouth about grade inflation, declaring A-Level and GCSE results “devalued” and “meaningless”.
By contrast, last year the change in policy helped restore faith in these extraordinary arrangements for those most affected by them — learners.
After all, no other generation has had to put up with as much disruption as this cohort of students. With formal examinations cancelled again this summer, the only sensible model on offer was teacher-assessed grades.
Despite this, the Oxbridge-educated Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson wrote a diatribe this year to bemoan the “all must have prizes” syndrome that has infected the education establishment.
And the political correspondent, Tom Harwood, launched a one-man Twitter tirade, calling for top grades to be fixed at low quartile percentages, like the finite number of medals handed out at the Olympics.
The hysterical reaction underpinning both these kind of arguments is, in my view, clear evidence that class-based elitism is alive and well in Britain today.
It’s the boneheaded belief that only a few must be allowed to succeed. The rest of us plebs are to be put in our place with, “sorry, old bean, your offspring don’t quite meet the grade.”
Totally predictable and positively Darwinian in nature.
Of course, exams are there to objectively assess performance and differentiate between candidates.
And where you have, in effect, a rationing system of access to top university courses, independently marked exams are still one of the fairest ways of distributing ‘positional goods’ amongst the population. The alternative would be money and nepotism.
But where the elitist argument falls flat on its face is the notion that in any single cohort of human beings, there is an artificially fixed amount of people who can succeed in the task that is being put before them.
One useful analogy that helps debunk this myth is the climbing of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest summit at 29,000 feet.
In 1953, Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first recorded people in history to conquer the challenge.
Since then, nearly 7,000 climbers have done it, with an average of 800 people who attempt the summit each year. On that measure, the attainment of this singular goal has resulted in massive climbing inflation compared to Hilary’s time.
Yet, the peak itself has not got any smaller. Instead, humans have learnt how to adapt. They are equipped in different ways.
The same is the case in relation to those passing A-levels these days.
The challenge is broadly the same as when these qualifications were first awarded in 1951, except teaching, learning and assessment models have adapted to take on the test over time.
Critics argue that this is a corruption of the system.
But who would seriously argue that a sailor who has circumnavigated the globe using GPS is any less worthy of the achievement than when Ferdinand Magellan first managed it with a crude astrolabe in the sixteenth century?
The truth is assessment systems are no different.
Our alternative assessment system was always going to result in significantly higher grade results compared to previous cohorts. It’s just wrong-headed to make straight comparisons with other years.
These angry critics must adapt to the world we live in today, not some imagined golden age of cucumber sandwiches and dreaming spires – where only the lucky few should advance.
Colleges and other education organisations are being asked for views on new statutory guidance on domestic abuse by the Home Office.
The consultation is being aimed at all organisations with a statutory responsibility for safeguarding, including local authorities, Jobcentre Plus, police forces as well as all education settings from early years to higher education settings.
New guidance is being drafted following the successful passage through Parliament of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which received Royal Assent in April. The act introduces, for the first time, a legal definition of domestic abuse which includes emotional abuse, controlling and coercive behaviour and economic abuse as well as physical abuse.
Lockdown measures introduced in response to Covid-19 have been attributed to a sharp rise in domestic abuse. Between March 2019 and March 2020, 1.6 million women and 757,000 men experienced domestic abuse, which is a seven per cent increase on previous figures according to the National Crime Survey. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline saw a 65 per cent increase in calls between April-June 2020 compared to January-March 2020 before lockdown measures were introduced.
The Home Office hope that this new statutory guidance will help education settings firm up their own safeguarding policies and procedures with clear information about what domestic abuse is, how to identify it and how to respond. Education settings will also be asked for views on inter-agency working locally, including on new Domestic Abuse Local Partnership Boards which local authorities are now required to set up.
The consultation can be found on the Home Office website and closes on 14th September.
The Department for Education is ditching the multi-million pound ‘Fire It Up’ campaign meant to boost apprenticeship numbers, amid the lowest levels of take-up by young people since at least the 1980s.
“As a result of ongoing work to integrate government communications for young people about education, training and work, the Department for Education will no longer run the ‘Fire it Up’ advertising campaign,” the update read.
Consequently, the DfE says it will not be renewing the licence to use rapper Busta Rhymes’ 1997 track ‘Fire It Up’ for their apprenticeships TV advert.
Providers have been asked to remove the track from any of their channels promoting apprenticeships by 1 September, which is when the licence will expire.
‘Fire It Up’ cost DfE millions
The blue feather logo
The blue feather ‘Apprenticeships’ logo can still be used on digital platforms, but not in print.
The first stage of the advertising campaign, aimed at boosting the number of apprenticeships, started in January and saw some initial success.
In January, just 14 per cent of young people told the DfE they were considering an apprenticeship, but by September that had risen to 71 per cent.
The campaign also included the release of a grime music track, which cost the DfE £1 million but contributed to a 171 per cent increase in the number of users of the apprenticeship website in January to March 2020 compared to the same period in 2019.
Apprenticeship take-up at lowest levels since ’80s
News of the demise of ‘Fire It Up’ comes the same day think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies released a report showing only three per cent of 16- and 17-year-olds took apprenticeships last year.
This is the lowest level since at least the 1980s and probably longer, the briefing on FE and sixth form spending revealed.
The DfE has stressed it is not discontinuing its communications activity around apprenticeships, with a spokesperson saying: “We are working across government to integrate all our communications about education, training and work both for young people and for adults.
“This will include communications about all options available to young people and adults respectively, including apprenticeships.”
The government has updated its contingency framework for further education and skills providers to include new Covid case “thresholds” that could prompt extra controls – but it will be up to leaders whether to use them.
The updated guidance on managing cases from the autumn term suggests that providers may want to consider “extra action” once certain thresholds are met.
The first suggested threshold is if five students or staff likely to have mixed closely test positive for Covid within a 10-day period.
The second is if 10 per cent of students or staff who are likely to have mixed closely test positive within 10 days.
The guidance includes a different threshold for special providers, residential settings, and settings that operate with 20 or fewer students and staff “at any one time”.
For these settings, the suggested threshold is if two students and staff likely to have mixed closely test positive in a 10 day period.
In the guidance, the Department for Education said the thresholds “can be used by settings as an indication for when to seek public health advice if they are concerned”.
The DfE also states it will “make sense” for most settings to consider extra action if the number of positive cases “substantially increases”. This is because it “could indicate transmission is happening in the setting”.
The guidance states that identifying groups likely to have mixed closely will be “different for each setting”. For FE providers, they could include students and teachers on practical courses which require close hands-on teaching such as hairdressing and barbering; students on sports teams together; or students and teachers who have mixed in the same classroom.
Providers told to consider outdoor activities and ways to improve ventilation
The guidance also sets out actions for providers to “consider once a threshold is reached”.
As well as reviewing and reinforcing testing, hygiene and ventilation measures already in place, the DfE said providers should consider whether any activities “can take place outdoors”.
Providers should also consider ways to “improve ventilation indoors, where this would not significantly impact thermal comfort”, as well as “one-off enhanced cleaning” focussing on “touch points and any shared equipment”.
The guidance also states that settings “may wish to seek additional public health advice if they are concerned about transmission in the setting”, either through the DfE’s helpline or “in line with other local arrangements”.
Directors of public health or health protection teams “may give settings advice reflecting the local situation”.
In areas where rates are high, this “may include advice that local circumstances mean that the thresholds for extra action can be higher than set out above”.
Local health directors may recommend attendance restrictions as ‘last resort’
Local directors of public health and health protection teams may also advise providers to strengthen communications on testing at home, temporarily reinstate face coverings, reinstate on-site lateral flow testing and increased frequency of testing.
In “extreme cases”, and as a “last resort where all other risk mitigations have not broken chains of transmission”, directors of public health “may advise introducing short-term attendance restrictions in a setting, such as sending home a class or year group”.
High-quality remote learning “should be provided for all students well enough to learn from home”.
Measures come on top of new testing and isolating rules
The actions and thresholds suggested today come on top of measures already set out in operational guidance that providers should have in place.
These include on-site testing in the autumn, and twice-weekly testing at home for secondary students and staff after that.
As announced last month, although those who test positive should isolate and take a confirmatory PCR test, under-18s will not need to self-isolate if they are a close contact of a positive case. Instead, they will “strongly advised” to take a PCR test, and will need to isolate if it comes back positive.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has echoed calls for extra college funding to abate an “immense” resourcing challenge caused by a boom in student numbers, falling apprenticeship places and insufficient funding.
But the share of 16- to 17-year-olds in full-time education rose by 85 per cent during the pandemic, and that age group is set to increase by 17 per cent between 2019 and 2024.
Real terms funding for school sixth forms, meanwhile, has fallen by 25 per cent since 2010-11, so the IFS calculates 16-19 providers will need an extra £570 million in 2022-23 to maintain per student spending in real terms.
The funding rate for post-16 education is completely inadequate and has been for many years
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The funding rate for post-16 education is completely inadequate and has been for many years, despite the number of 16 and 17-year-olds staying in full-time education hitting an all-time high of 85 per cent in 2020.
“There is no rhyme or reason why the funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds is less than the minimum funding rate for secondary school pupils and nowhere near university tuition fees. All of this before the far-reaching impacts of the pandemic are factored in, with a profound need to catch up on lost learning.”
The briefing’s co-author Imran Tahir warns that colleges and sixth forms “face immense resource challenges,” including having to catch students up on learning lost during the pandemic.
A £400 million funding boost for 16-19-year-old students for 2020-21, announced by the Treasury in 2019, will only reverse funding cuts back to 2018-19, “leaving in place the vast majority of the cuts to funding per student over the previous decade,” he added.
Extra 200,000 16- and 17-year-olds by 2024
The Office for National Statistics has forecast there will be an extra 200,000 16- and 17-year-olds in England by 2024.
Alongside that, students are also choosing classroom-based qualifications, such as A-levels and BTECs, to the extent over 90 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds are now taking them.
The proportion of that age group taking part in work-based learning also fell by around 30 per cent between 2019 and 2020, the IFS also found. Only three per cent of them took apprenticeships last year, while two per cent were in employer-funded training – the lowest levels for those two programmes since at least the 1980s.
Cheryl Lloyd, education programme head at the Nuffield Foundation, which funded the briefing, believes that “without further action,” the decline in apprenticeships could become permanent.
“To reverse this trend,” she said, “more support is needed for students, education providers and the businesses,” including incentives like protected funding for 16- to 18-year-olds and extra support for disadvantaged learners.
Without extra funding, more pressure will be placed on sixth form and college finances “which are already strained as a result of extra costs during the pandemic and falls in spending per student over the past decade,” the briefing reads.
£400m boost had to be stretched due to student numbers
New funding streams for vocational courses has also meant FE suffered a nine per cent funding cut between 2013-14 and 2019-20, rather than the up to 18 per cent sixth forms have endured.
Thanks to the rush of enrolments during this pandemic, the £400 million boost will have had to be stretched to cover more students.
An added pressure on colleges is how they are funded for students on a one-year lag.
Earlier this month, the Association of Colleges put out a report saying college funding should move to an “in-year” model as it predicted an extra 90,000 students would need college places by 2024/25.
The IFS itself warned last year that, owing to FE’s lagged funding system, exceptional rises in student numbers could generate a real terms fall in funding per student in 2020/21.
David Hughes
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said in response to today’s briefing the lagged funding methodology “makes it increasingly difficult for colleges to cater to every student during times of population growth and even more so when there are also reduced opportunities in the labour market and on apprenticeships”.
He said there is an “urgent need” for the Department for Education to guarantee full funding for every student recruited by a college this autumn, as they do for universities.
Sixth Form Colleges Association deputy chief executive James Kewin has said the government can no longer “fund sixth form education on the cheap, and must use the spending review to introduce a multi-year funding model for the sector”.
Future years’ funding will be decided at spending review
In response to the briefing, a DfE spokesperson highlighted the £291 million of funding announced at 2020’s spending review to maintain the base rate at £4,188 per student in 2021-22.
This funding “has contributed to the current record high proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds who are participating in education or apprenticeships since consistent records began,” the spokesperson said.
A college has promised a “wholesale” review of A-level grades it handed out for certain subjects this summer, after students protested their results were unfairly changed.
Havering Sixth Form College, part of New City College London, has found grades in certain subjects such as maths and humanities were changed more than others so will be looking at whether grade boundaries were applied correctly during its moderation process.
The review is starting today, and a result is expected as early as this week.
The college is also “actively” considering all appeals and has extended the deadline to lodge them. Information about this will be published on NCC’s website.
Students and parents held a protest outside Havering Sixth Form yesterday after many learners received results which were lower than what they were expecting, throwing apprenticeship and university places into doubt.
They claimed NCC’s management had adjusted their original teacher-assessed results downward, to keep the overall marks in line with previous year’s cohorts.
MP hopes students will be ‘reassured’ about A-level grades
Hornchurch and Upminster MP and Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez, who met with Havering’s principal Janet Smith yesterday to discuss the students’ complaints, said she was “pleased” the college “have listened to students’ concerns and will be reviewing individual appeals across the board.
Julia Lopez
“I hope that my meeting with Janet will lead to an outcome that reassures students of the integrity of their eventual grades, and helps with their next stage of education or the first steps in their working lives.”
Romford MP Andrew Rosindell wrote to NCC’s principal Gerry McDonald last week expressing his “concern” students had seen their results downgraded “significantly” by the college.
The college has said the moderation process, where teachers marked in-house assessments and grades were calculated using 2018/19 performance data before being moderated by principals, did not change the A-level grades students were given by teachers in most subjects.
Schools minister Nick Gibb and the leadership of exams regulator Ofqual will face questions from MPs at an education committee hearing on this summer’s results and plans for 2022.
The committee has announced today that Gibb will appear alongside Ofqual’s interim chief regulator Simon Lebus and interim chair Ian Bauckham.
It comes as Lebus, who has been in-post since January, prepares to hand over the reins to Jo Saxton, who was chosen earlier this year as the next permanent chief regulator.
Saxton was previously a policy adviser to education secretary Gavin Williamson.
Nick Gibb
The announcement of the hearing on September 7 follows the release of GCSE and A-level results last week.
Following the cancellation of formal exams and a move to teacher assessment, the proportion of top grades issued increased to 30 per cent at GCSE and 44 per cent at A-level.
As well as concerns about grade inflation, the results last week also prompted fears about growing inequality among some groups.
The committee will ask panellists about lessons learned from the 2020-21 academic year, and about the government’s plans for exams in 2022.
Ministers have said these will go ahead, but with some adjustments in an attempt to address concerns about missed schooling.
Committee chair Robert Halfon, pictured top, said: “Students, along with their hardworking teachers and support staff, deserve to be congratulated on some outstanding results after overcoming all the challenges posed in this most difficult of years.
“Ofqual and the DfE must now focus on ensuring all young people, particularly those that have missed out the most on learning during the pandemic, are properly supported in taking exams next summer.
“There also needs to be a proper plan for returning to more normal grading standards to reverse the grade inflation that has been baked into the system.”
Students and parents have picketed a London sixth form over accusations the college leadership unfairly altered their A-level grades.
The protesters claim grades handed to students at Havering Sixth Form College were not those set by teachers and were instead changed down by senior managers at the college’s parent group, New City College London.
Protest organiser and parent Sarah Bissagar told FE Week her son was predicted an A*, an A and a C and “continually” got top marks in his tests, only to be handed a C, a D and an E.
We’re here at @havering6thform at a protest by students and parents against their A-level grades. They are alleging the college management changed their grades AFTER they were set by teachers. Stay tuned to this thread for more 🧵 pic.twitter.com/X84pKhmtwp
She said her son had been applying for jobs and apprenticeships, but employers are not interested now he has got those grades back.
“His mental health is going to suffer massively,” she worries.
Bissagar said her son was told after he got his grades back: “The teachers put the marks and they were then amended by the senior level which turned out to be NCC London.
“These results were meant to be teacher assessments. Why the hell did they change them as they’ve never taught my son, nor seen him, or know his capabilities,” she questioned.
‘Why is it our college that loses out?’
This comes after this summer’s A-level, GCSE, and a number of vocational results were decided using teacher assessed grades – which led to the number of A-level grades A and above rising to 44 per cent on last year in England.
Yet this has not been the case at Havering, where protestors have questioned why the college took its performance in 2018/19 into account when deciding this year’s results, when the ways students were assessed were so vastly different.
Matt Cornish
Speaking outside the college today, 18-year-old Matt Cornish asked why, if there has been grade inflation across England, “is it our community’s college, with many students from low-income backgrounds, that loses out. We don’t understand.”
Romford MP Rosindell has written to McDonald, in a letter seen by FE Week, that it is “deeply concerning” students in his constituency “have seen their grades downgraded significantly from what their teachers awarded them, putting their whole future at risk”.
What was “more concerning” for Rosindell was that those students’ teachers were “shocked at the result, indicating new discussions were had with those who know their students best”.
In his letter, Rosindell wrote Havering’s students should receive the same treatment as students across the country and “should not be penalised for the absence of in-person exams.
“I do not believe students received fair or accurate results for their A-levels,” he concluded.
College takes students’ protests ‘very seriously’
NCC London said that overall, its pass rate for the over 2,000 A-level grades awarded to their students this year rose by 1.3 per cent on 2018/19 – the last year of in-person exams – and the number of B and above grades rose by 1.7 per cent in what they called “a good set of results”.
A spokesperson said teachers had set three assessments for each A-level, two of which were taken in March, with a final paper in June, which teachers marked before they all met to ensure scores were consistent. Grades were then generated by applying the 2018/19 boundaries to those scores, before a further moderation meeting where grades were moved up as well as down, the spokesperson said.
Ofqual’s guidance on submitting teacher-assessed grades this summer states exam centres should compare grades for the 2021 cohort to those from 2017, 2018 and 2019 for all A-level subjects combined, “to check that they have not been overly harsh or lenient in their assessment of the 2021 cohort compared to previous years”.
NCC says a second moderation process was then undertaken at principal level “to ensure the overall grades awarded were consistent, robust, and in line with historic performance”.
The college says the principals’ moderation process confirmed the grades from the first moderation stage in most cases, though “in a minority of subjects, grades were adjusted to ensure consistency”.
“The process of converting a score into a grade is complex especially for a centre of our scale,” they argued, and teachers and students “had concluded the final outcome of the moderation process does not align with their own grade assessment,” which is what led to them expressing “dissatisfaction” with the college.
“We take this very seriously and our accelerated appeals process will be concluded next week,” the spokesperson said.
Ofqual’s